Hi there. Normally, I try to keep Earth Song Jewelry focused on the jewelry, the creation process, and on finding the right jewelry for you. Forgive me if I’m making an exception at the moment.
International Women’s Day, which is March 8th, during Women’s History Month, is incredibly important to me.
I’m not simply a small business owner, a jewelry artisan, and an American entrepreneur. I’m also a woman - and being a woman has shaped my experience in many ways, some obvious, others more subtle.
Today, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate women in the Tech Industry for a reason that might be a little surprising to some of you.
You see, before I launched Earth Song Jewelry and decided to turn my love of nature and natural stones into a full-time business, I had a 30-year career. In 1981 I went to school for computer engineering, back when women in engineering, or any STEM career, were still relatively rare. In fact, I rose to several prominent executive management positions in Silicon Valley. After almost 30 years, I decided to leave the tech industry, in part because being a woman and an engineer was a minefield of constantly fighting for the respect and pay my experience, company position, and skills deserved.
Unfortunately, part of reaching those executive management positions was seeing how real the pay gap was - and how I had been included in that pay gap compared with my peers.
Starting my journey in Engineering back in 1981, I remember being the only woman in many of my University classes. I had professors ask me why I was taking their class, including one who outright suggested I should leave and pursue a different education and career. Seriously! Needless to say, I ignored him and continued on to get my engineering degree.
Thankfully, I was hired by a different professor, one who saw my skills rather than my gender, who hired me to write the software needed for the research done by his graduate students. That hiring decision helped launch my career. And I’m grateful because it was an opportunity to prove what I could do in a demonstrable way.
That opportunity showed me how powerful it was to have someone believe in you. It gave me better chances in the job market after graduation and more confidence that I had the skills I needed for a successful career.
But, given my experiences with other professors questioning my class decisions, and other experiences of bias; I wonder if I would have had the same chances as my male peers if I hadn’t had a professor willing to give me a remarkable opportunity.
I don’t want to make it sound like being an engineer was all bad, either. My profession as a software engineer and later SVP of Engineering & Operations taught me so many skills, ways of thinking, ways of working with people and ways of keeping myself organized that I still use today in the management and jewelry design process for Earth Song Jewelry.
Turns out, having a background in software engineering and tech management makes for some great handmade jewelry!
Facing an uphill battle for promotions, for pay, and for the respect I deserved (sometimes even having to follow the men in business meetings to the men’s bathroom because it didn’t occur to them that continuing the meeting in the men’s room excluded one member of the meeting!), taught me a lot about myself. It taught me my value and the value of my knowledge and skill set. It taught me how taking ownership of problems and making yourself responsible for fixing them can be empowering. I learned not only that I should stand up for myself, but also how to do that, even when no one wanted to hear what I had to say.
I also discovered that I was the kind of person who was willing to stand up for other people in those same business meetings. I’d had that kind of leg up from the professor who believed in me and others, and now that I was in a position to help other people in the same career, I discovered that I could. So I did.
Ultimately, when I decided it was time to forge my own path and become my own boss by launching Earth Song Jewelry. My career in the tech industry taught me many things, but it was time for a change. It was a complicated decision, but a good one.
Because of my history, I know firsthand how important it is to uplift women and to celebrate the women who are thriving, especially in tech. The tech industry sometimes looks like a boy’s club, especially at the executive level, where efforts toward diversity and inclusion have been slower to take root. But the women who thrive there are strong, skilled, insightful, and many of them had to fight battles just like mine to get where they are.
March Is Me - Earth Song Jewelry’s Tribute To Celebrating Women
Speaking of creative makers… this is where I circle back to talking about Earth Song Jewelry. Subtle, right?
In honor of International Women’s Day, Women’s History Month and to celebrate March Is Me Month with the Women’s Jewelry Association, I have a collection of jewelry I specifically curated with the idea of celebrating yourself, femininity, and your own womanhood.
If you’re interested in treating yourself to beautiful handmade jewelry and want to support a woman entrepreneur and small business owner at the same time, my March Is Me Collection is a great way to get started.
And, if you’ve made it this far into the article, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for listening and coming along with me while I explain why International Women’s Day is so impactful for me personally.
